Hill’s Spot’s First Picnic begins when Spot helps Mom prepare the bread and jam and cheese sandwiches. There is a bone for Spot and a canteen with some beverage, perhaps milk. Friends each bring their share of food, and off they go.
Besides Spot, the picnickers are Helen, the blue hippopotamus, Steve, the monkey, and Tom, the alligator. In the field, the group settles a big tree near a stream. After playing, they spread a cloth under the tree and begin the feast: Spot eats the bone and the sandwiches, Steve eats a banana, Helen an orange, and Tom doesn’t seem to have any food.
“Spot, put down a tablecloth.” Eric Hill. Spot’s First Picnic (1987)
They use the blanket for a tent when it rains, but Steve falls out of a tree and wrecks it. When they arrive home safely, Mom has a surprise for them: “I knew you’d come back wet and hungry, so I made an indoor picnic.” So the group is rewarded for having fun, and they sit on a picnic cloth on the parlor floor and eat jam sandwiches, cookies, tomatoes, oranges, and bananas. “Thanks, Mom!” says Spot, “We are hungry, but we didn’t mind getting wet at all!”
See Eric Hill. Spot’s First Picnic. G.P. Putnam’s Sons: New York 1987